Britain's new top soldier: 'Can the military cope? I say - just'

Troops 'running hot and at limit' as alarm grows over 14 deaths in Afghanistan

The ensign flies at half mast over RAF Kinloss, base for 12 of the 14 British service personnel who died when a Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft crashed in southern Afghanistan. Photograph: Simon Price/PA

Sunday 3 September 2006 21.19 EDT
First published on Sunday 3 September 2006 21.19 EDT

The new head of the British army has told the Guardian that his soldiers are fighting at the limit of their capacity and can only just cope with the demands placed on them by the government. Sir Richard Dannatt, who took over from Sir Mike Jackson last week, called for a national debate about what resources the armed forces should be given, and what value society should place on them.

In his first interview since taking up his post as chief of the general staff, General Dannatt warned: "We are running hot, certainly running hot." He added: "Can we cope? I pause. I say 'just'."

His warning comes as the government faces renewed pressure over Britain's involvement in Afghanistan after the deaths of 14 military personnel on Saturday, when an RAF Nimrod based at RAF Kinloss, in north-east Scotland, crashed in Kandahar province, in the south of the country. The MoD named the men last night and released pictures of 10 of them.

The crash was described yesterday as a tragic accident by the defence secretary, Des Browne, who angrily denied Taliban claims they had shot down the plane. But the crash - the biggest single loss for the British military since the start of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 - brings the four-month toll of British military killed in action in southern Afghanistan to 27, and has once again focused attention on whether the armed services are "overstretched".

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian before Saturday's crash, Gen Dannatt said British soldiers were not fighting the "fourth Afghan war" - a reference to past military disasters in the country. He said they were in Afghanistan at the request of President Hamid Karzai and would be there "for the long term".

On whether other Nato countries should contribute more, Gen Dannatt said Britain was doing "more than its share of what is required in Afghanistan".

Asked about suggestions that the 7,200-strong British force in Iraq could be halved by the middle of next year, he stressed that that had been described only as a "hope". Previous hopes about Iraq had not been fulfilled, he pointed out. He also refused to set a timeframe for an eventual British withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He said the army was "meeting challenges on the hoof". But it was not for him to say whether the 5% of public spending (about £30bn) earmarked for defence - a figure he compared with the 29% spent on social security - was sufficient. "There is room for debate," he said. "There should be a national debate about whatever [is judged] enough."

But soldiers had to "feel valued by society and feel well looked after", and he pointed to the poor state of accommodation for them and their families.

The Nimrod plane, stuffed with intelligence-gathering equipment, was flying at a little under 30,000ft when the pilot reported a serious problem. Wreckage of the aircraft was found 12 miles west of Kandahar. "We know what happened but we don't know why," a senior defence source said yesterday. The Ministry of Defence would not disclose what went wrong, other than saying that there had been a technical problem.